Wafer joining technology may be used to integrate various properties from different materials into one compact process-compatible material system. Wafer joining technology has great potential. For example, joining GaAs or InP-based materials to other semiconductor materials may result in the integration of optical, photovoltaic, and electronic devices and enhance the performance of computers, solar cells, light emitting diodes and other electronic devices.
Group III-V semiconductor materials are comprised of one or more elements from Group III of the periodic table and one or more elements from Group V of the periodic table. One of the limitations of Group III-V semiconductor devices, such as multi junction solar cells, is the need to incorporate various lattice-matched device components within a semiconductor device. Specifically, lattice-matching may limit the possible bandgap combinations between device components in the semiconductor device. Thus, in an effort to expand or widen the bandgap combinations between various device components within a semiconductor device, inverted metamorphic (IMM) technologies may be employed to grow device components that are lattice-mismatched to their growth substrate. Specifically, IMM technologies may invert the usual growth order of device components, where the lattice-mismatched device components may be grown last. Moreover, multiple transparent buffer layers may be used to absorb the strain of the lattice-mismatch between various device components. However, incorporating multiple transparent buffer layers may increase the cost of the semiconductor device. Moreover, the resulting semiconductor device grown using IMM technologies may require an additional device handle, which also adds cost to the semiconductor device.
In another approach to create a semiconductor device, lattice-matched materials of specific bandgap combinations may be directly bonded to one another. A sacrificial lateral etch layer and an epitaxial lift-off process may be employed to recycle the growth substrate in an effort to reduce cost. Some examples of the growth substrate include GaAs-based, InP-based, and GaSb-based materials. However, there still exists a need for a cost-effective semiconductor device having a relatively wide range of bandgap combinations between device components.